Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is a powerful tool for the study of gene function in plants.Here we report that by syringe-infiltrating the tobacco rattle virus (TRV)-vector into the carpopodium of a tomato fruit attached to the plant,it can induce silencing of genes such as LeCTRI,LeEIN3 and LeEIN2.The result shows that TRV-mediated carpopodium infiltration can be applied for VIGS in tomato fruit.We also improved the silencing effect of leaf infiltration by changing temperature and humidity.In order to carry out large scale library screening in the future,we recently developed the sprout vacuum-infiltration method.This is simple,fast and highly efficient compared to leaf infiltration and agrodrenching.The results of our study indicate that the application of VIGS techniques by the described methods can be successfully applied to tomato fruit and are a valuable tool for studying functions of the relevant genes during fruit development.